


Orange Groves

by plastics



Category: Original Work
Genre: Cults, Dying Breath of the Hippies, Implied/Referenced Underage Prostitution, M/M, Manipulation, Rape/Non-con Elements, Recreational Drug Use, Sibling Incest, Underage Sex, domestic abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:54:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25600909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plastics/pseuds/plastics
Summary: Like every other kid someone could pick up off the street, Ben is dirty and hungry and desperate. But Ben isn't like any other kid—that much is obvious at a glance.“And why do you want me there?” Ben asks, although it's obvious his mind has already been made up.“There’s someone I’d like to introduce you to.”
Relationships: Backwoods Cult Leader/Runaway Teenage Boy, OMC/OMC
Comments: 9
Kudos: 29
Collections: Multifandom Horror Exchange (2020)





	Orange Groves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thatgothlibrarian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatgothlibrarian/gifts).



> This is extremely loosely Brotherhood of Eternal Love-shaped, as in, I learned of its existence while this story was gaining speed in my brain and went ‼️ 
> 
> Cannot claim nor was I aiming for any real sense of accuracy, although I hope my local librarian gets a kick out of my requests.

Ben is at a rest stop in Utah when these two men—kinda rough looking, kinda dirty—come up to him and ask if he’s hungry. He saw them coming, saw them looking at him and back to each other and bowing their heads, and he is hungry, has been for weeks or maybe even months by now, but maybe not _that_ hungry. Then again, maybe this is his chance to get something to eat and still have enough money left over to buy that next bus ticket west. Two guys, double the price, right? Not like Ben looks much like an outstanding member of society right now, either, who is he to judge.

So they walk to a nearby diner and while the waitress isn’t thrilled at the sight of them (“How do you know these men, baby?” she asks, “Uncles,” Ben replies,) it doesn’t stop her from seating them and bringing out overflowing plates and hot coffee. The scent alone reminds of more normal mornings, feasts on Sunday. But the coffee had been his father’s, a pool of bitterness even with cream and sugar. Ben never got a taste for it.

He eats until his stomach hurts, all of his plate and then the toast of Will’s and the eggs off Ron’s, until Will asks, “You’re trying to get out to California, right?”

Ben pauses and plants his heel into the linoleum beneath them. His shoes are so thin it hardly feels any different than if he were barefoot. He’s sitting on the bench closest to the door alone. He could run if he wanted to. It’s been the one truly good thing in this whole trip, just being able to go and disappear completely in a moment. But where else are street kids heading these days? “Yeah.”

“Well, that’s where we came from and where we’re going now. Don’t know how familiar you are with the lay of the land out that way, but we’re just outside L.A. We could make it a real easy trip for you.”

“I’m not trying to go to L.A., I’m heading north. To San Francisco.” 

Will makes a funny face, the corner of his mouth twitching beneath a scraggly beard. “Well, listen, kid, you’re a little late to the drop out that way, but this spot we know, I swear to you on anything you believe in that it’s the grooviest place west of Goa.”

“And why do you want me there?”

“There’s someone I’d like to introduce you to.”

Ben takes a gulp of oversweet apple juice. “That’s it? You just want to introduce me to some guy?”

Then Ron shifts to his side, and out of his coat pocket, he pulls out a gnarly-looking knife. The handle looks worn but the steel gleams as it springs out into the dull diner light. Ben goes cold then hot, and he’s half-out of his seat before Ron says, “You’ve been taking buses, right? Only route from here to San Francisco goes through Los Angeles, anyway. That’s a full day’s drive, and I mean _full_ , assuming you can afford every transfer and don’t get stranded in Vegas. Or you can take a shortcut with us for free, and if you don’t like what we have to offer, we’ll pay for your ticket out, too. Hell, if you don’t like how we so much as take a turn—” he turns the handle in Ben’s direction, “you can make quick work of both of us.”

Ben hesitates. Takes the knife, folds the blade back in before the waitress returns. The tag handle is worn white in parts, but it feels good in Ben’s hand. Solid.

This is probably stupid. Guys don’t pick up kids in positions like Ben’s in just to give them a boost. They don’t carry just one knife on them.

The truth is, Ben isn’t made of very stiff stuff. Every mile he’s put between himself and home has made it easier, but the shit weighs on him too. Hasn’t been eating well. Not sleeping well. A nervous voice in the back of his head has always been a hair away from tucking his tail and running home since he got on that first bus out of Grand Rapids. Another day, another week, shouldn’t be anything compared to what’s behind him.

But Ben doesn’t want to spend another minute on another bus.

The knife doesn’t matter much in the end, because Ben ends up in the bed curling himself around boxes of supplies after the first pitstop. Even with how scrawny they all are, the cab made Ben feel claustrophobic, and the same petulant urge that got him on this ride in the first place was sick of being around people.

He watches as the ink drains from the sky and leaves a dull indigo behind for sunrise to set fire to. Sleep comes in short fits, interrupted either by a bump in the road or a jolt of raw panic. The noon sun is intense even with the wind whipping around, so he takes off his shirt and clumps it between his head and the dank dirt covering the drunk. The shirt smells, too, the intense teenage BO that his mom was always harping about having long caught up with him.

One of the guys bang on the glass when they pass through the town that carries them from Nevada to California, but it’s another three hours before they get off the highway and decelerate onto what looks like private roads.

Despite what Will had said back in the diner, Ben had looked at maps, photos, every magazine he could get his hands on before heading out west. Still, this image of California—cutting through mountains, the insistent green of desert plants—isn’t the one that embedded itself in his mind. His heart thuds in his chest as he raises himself onto the side of the bed and takes it all in.

It’s early afternoon, and the camp they pull up to looks _exactly_ how Ben thought such a place should look. A proper hippie commune, with longhaired people moving about tents and ramshackle buildings they must have built themselves that stretch around the cut of the hills, laughter and the scent of dope floating through the air.

A towheaded man approaches the truck, so casual that it almost seems like a coincidence he was there at all. His beard covers most of his face, but Ben still watches him closely as he asks Ron, “You get the goods?”

“And then some,” Will boasts, and then finally the man’s gaze drifts to Ben, who is already stumbling off the back of the truck and towards the man in a clumsy rush. The voice cracks clean through the shell, and he barely registers the recognition being returned before wrapping his arms around and presses his face into his brother’s neck.

“Holy shit,” Ben sobs, and James grips him back just as tight.

  
  


James spent a week walking around dazed after his induction letter came in the mail. Already graduated. Didn’t have a girl to knock up, wouldn’t have if he did. Perfect condition.

Dad made a lot of noise about a man being called to action. Mom baked. Ben waited in the shadows.

In the end, things broke quietly. They woke up one day and James was gone. To Canada, probably; his best buddy Terry wouldn’t say anything about it, but it was a nine-hour round trip to Sault Ste. Marie, and he’d pulled his truck into their neighboring driveway around noon.

  
  


The people around the commune call James “Brother Indazita,” which Ben doesn’t laugh about until they’re alone. There’s a shallow lake behind the commune that Ben can actually submerge himself in. Get his hair wet. They even have _soap._

“I thought God was the biggest phony of them all,” Ben teases as he dips his face back beneath the cool surface of the pond. Back home, James’ atheism had both been a thorn in Dad’s side and the great truth underlining his life. He’d even tried to use it to back being a conscientious objector, although the argument didn’t hold. This James is practically unrecognizable, except for how Ben doesn’t think he could ever not know his own blood.

“Our Western ideals have completely warped so many fundamental truths of this world,” James replies, unbothered where there used to be a mountain of evidence and counterarguments. “Of _life._ I hope you see that while you’re here.”

Ben laughs, and they float up as a small flurry of bubbles. “Okay.”

Carefully, a hand rests at the crown of his head, then combs back the hair clinging to his forehead. He looks up as James says, “Your hair’s gotten darker.”

“Just at the roots,” Ben protests, but James is right. Both of their parents and most of their cousins have long-since faded into a mousy brown that plagues their family later in life. The dulling hadn’t been as obvious without James as a measurement.

Ben isn’t thinking about the rest of their family. The memory comes bright and blurry. They’re far enough apart in age that Ben must have been young, but the parallels were obvious enough to fill in the gaps: the two of them, bare-assed in a bathtub, Ben splashing around, James looking down at him the same way he is now. 

He thinks that look must be more like home than any house.

There are more people than Ben would’ve imagined living in the commune, at least fifty, and not much food, but that first night still feels like a feast. He sits at James’ right hand and feels more wholly welcomed within a few hours than he ever has in the community he grew up with.

“Oh, look at you, you’re so handsome. Not hard at all to believe you’re kin with the Brother,” an older woman who introduces herself as Mama Tara gushes.

“Man, it must have taken some balls to cross the entire country to get out here. If basic training hadn’t shipped me out here, who knows where I would have landed,” another man laughs.

“I didn’t actually know he was out here,” Ben admits. “I’m just lucky Will and Ron recognized me.”

“Then it’s _fate,_ man. That’s even more beautiful.”

Later, after dinner had broken up and James left with a few or the more senior-seeming guys, a girl named Rosie who can’t be much older than Ben whispers to him, “It’s hard to believe that Brother Indazita has an literal blood brother—not that it really matters, we’re all equal here, but it just feels like he sprung from the lotus fully formed, you now? I can’t imagine him having a life before this.”

Ben crinkles his nose. However _enlightened_ they think James is now, Ben still remembers the stupid fights he used to pick, with Dad, his friends, teachers, bosses, the time he nearly threw Ben out the window over a broken baseball bat—even with the years that have passed, it hasn’t been _that_ long.

Instead, he accepts the spliff as it’s passed to him and says, “Well, we’re all human. That’s kind of the point, isn’t it?”

“That’s so true,” Rosie replies, amazed, and if Ben wasn’t so tired, he thinks it would have made him sit up a bit straighter. As it is, he can barely keep his eyes open, and the dope isn’t helping.

It does help when someone finally digs out a spare cot for him and sets it up in one of the cabins, like spit soothing a wayward hair. For the first time in a long time, he sleeps easy, even as grunts and squeaks start to fill the room.

Ben wakes up still tired. The rest of the cabin is empty.

The sun beams as brightly as it did yesterday. He inhales deeply—the air isn’t as fresh as he’d hoped. He hadn’t seen any manufacturing on the way in, but they could just be downwind from it. Hell, they make enough in-house that he guesses that it could be coming from within the commune. It’s an idea Ben accepts as fact when he asks one of the guys wandering towards the gardens where James is, who makes another one of those funny faces Ben is starting to see all over the place before he replies, “Workin’ on the goods.”

“Right,” Ben says.

With nothing left to do, he follows the guy into the fields. They tell him he missed breakfast but give him a handful of peas, big enough he has to cup them against his chest with one hand as he uses the other to work the pods open. They’re bright in his mouth; Ben’s not sure he ever ate something this fresh out of the ground even back in Michigan.

It’s no one that he met last night but they let him trail after them, pointing at the crops that need more time and which they can pluck. His neck and then his shoulders once he finally strips off his shirt get red and hot under the sun, but he doesn’t mind.

Eventually, Ben follows them all back to the heart of camp for lunch, which is more plants. Someone plays the guitar. Another rolls a joint. James still isn’t around. Ben takes whatever’s passed to him.

None of it puts a real crack in the exhaustion he’d woken up with. That he’s been carrying. He’d thought having somewhere safe to lie his head would pull the drain on all the shit building up, and the commune is better than he could have ever dreamed. It’s real. His brother is here, alive and well despite any other weirdness.

Will finds Ben lying in the shade with the last of the joint singeing his fingers after the rest of the crew heads back to work. “Mind looks heavy, there, friend. Want to talk about it?”

Does Ben want to talk about it? It had eaten at him on the road, how little anyone cared about the person next to them. And it’s not like he’d been running from the most supportive place on earth. The most meaningful conversation he’s had the whole time has been with cashiers, and half the time the only thing they said back was that he was thirty cents short. 

“No,” he says. Not with Will, at least. Maybe not with anyone. Maybe it’d be best to just bury it deep, pour cement over it.

“Alright,” Will replies easily. “I’m heading into town. You’re welcome to come, if you feel like it.”

“What for?”

Will shrugs. “Errands. Might catch some waves if they're agreeable.”

Ben perks up. “You surf?”

“Yeah,” Will laughs. “It’s how most of us old hats met before we moved up here.”

It’d been harder to judge back at the rest stop, but Will can’t be much older than James, and James is only twenty-three. He’d always been so firmly a man in Ben’s memories, but somehow it’s harder to believe it now with James in his peripheral again, in the community James made. Like they’re playing house or something, except there’s no Mom and Dad to step in and make sure there’s real food to eat and that James can’t actually sentence him to death for breaking Excalibur. 

_And look how well that turned out,_ Ben reminds himself. Isn’t this the whole point of running away? Escaping the bogus trappings of suburban living?

Besides, he’s always wanted to see the Pacific. 

They take a different truck than the one they’d driven in with, beat up, but it’s just as crowded in the cabin and even more so in the back. Rosie presses herself up against him with a smile, wedged between the sidewalls and the boards—real, genuine, beautiful fiberglass, as long as Ben is tall. No one expects him to talk, and Ben doesn’t know if it’s because Will said something or if they just don’t care, but it’s good to just be able to feel and hear people around him without having to put the act up himself.

Riding into town is like riding into paradise, even before they hit the coast. He tries to imagine a place like this in Michigan, a _people_ like this, and it’s like oil in water. 

“You’re probably craving something real to eat again, huh?” Will asks, and Ben doesn’t even need to reply before he’s tapping the guy at the register and telling him, “Give the kid a few bucks.”

“It’s cool, man, really—”

“You’re only saying that because you haven’t been to The Shack yet. It’s straight down Catalina. Grab me a smoothie while you’re at it.” It’s a dismissal, and that, at least, Ben can follow.

Catalina is as straight a shot as Will made it sound, and even though Ben’s only been in town ten minutes, he likes the feeling of being able to walk down the street like he knows where he’s going. In this collection of brand new sorts of people Ben has never seen before, no one glances back at him. He’s just part of the crowd.

Even as he delights in this new bohemian anonymity, a practically animalistic euphoria takes over him as he approaches The Shack. It’s small, but not quite how he pictured a beach bungalow, and it _smells_ exactly like the burger place he used to go to back home even through the heavy salt air of the ocean.

The first bite is heaven. The fifth is interrupted from the commune folks finding him again, now with the top layers stripped down to swimwear, and one of the guys Ben hadn’t really interacted with pulling a face.

“Is that a meat patty?” he says, and Ben flushes with shame. He’d read up on vegetarianism, got the argument, but Will had been right that he still craves it, and, besides, wasn’t it natural that the top of the food chain reaps the rewards? Although Ben guesses man’s ego is what got the world into such a mess to begin with—

“Chill, man,” Will chides. “He just got here after a long ride out. Besides, it’s important to support our brothers in the community.” He punctuates it with a long sip of his smoothie, and while the other man makes a small grimace, he doesn’t push it. After a moment, Ben takes another fat bite of his burger.

As he eats, he watches them joke around as they wax the boards as easy as second nature. He tries not to be obvious about it, but he gets caught anyway. Ben tries to look away, but all it means is he misses it when Will tosses a wadded up ball of fabric at him. 

Board shorts. More floral than anything his mom would let him be seen in.

“Figured you probably didn’t pack any in that little bag of yours,” Will says.

“Jeeze, man. Thanks,” Ben says. “... Do I just change…?”

Will laughs loud. “You can if you want! Or you could do it under a towel.”

The water is shockingly cold, the way it always is at first. He stays shallow but watches as people swim past the white water. They look beautiful out there, elegant, even when the water topples them over. When Will washes back in, it’s hard not to seem overeager when he asks, “Want to give it a shot?”

Back on the shore, Will lays a board out and asks Ben, “You know how to swim?”

“Duh.”

“Well, then, that’s the most important part.” They still go through the paddle, hand placement, the pop-up, but it isn’t too long before they’re back out in the water with Will urging Ben into a wave. 

He’s used to spending summers on the lake, so it feels natural to catch the movement of the wave, feel it swell beneath him. He lifts his torso, and in a swift movement brings his left foot forward as he pushes himself up—

Immediately, the board topples beneath him then throws him. He rolls in the water, and it gets up his nose and his ears before he can orientate himself, and even then it’s another rough moment before the wave lets him go. By the time he stands, he can hear the guffaws of the guys still out there. Will’s still waiting on the beach, but he’s laughing too. “Aw, don’t be embarrassed. Gremmies have to start somewhere.”

Ben stands, head down, raw and embarrassed from the salt and sand, but Will grabs his arm. “I’m serious, kid. Half us can’t get our feet under us after years. Give it another go.”

Acutely aware of the eyes on him and knowing, deep down, that Will is right and this is what Ben wanted, to learn and to have someone to teach him, Ben goes. He falls again, then again, then again, and then doesn’t bother trying to stand a few times, just letting the white water's forward push carry him. It’s a good time. Relaxing, until they spot Rosie waving her arms on the shore, yelling. Ben asks, “What’s she saying?”

“Fuck,” Will spits. “Abbott.”

Ben doesn’t have time to ask who that is before everyone else jumps into action, paddling in, collecting their things sprawled on the peach, moving just barely slow enough to not look like they’re rushing. They’re walking fast back to where they’d parked the truck, bare feet against hot pavement, when a cop cuts them off. Plain clothes, but still obvious.

“Speyer. Always a bad time when I see you in town,” the man Ben can only imagine is Abbott says.”

“I don’t see how we should have any influence over your day, given your jurisdiction ends thirty miles north and we certainly didn’t seek _you_ out,” Will replies, voice easy as it’d been back at that diner in Utah.

“Just think of me as a concerned citizen, then,” Abbott says. “Heard you’d picked up a stray. A young one.”

“Ain’t nothing but young souls here, mister.”

Abbott’s withering gaze drops from Will to Ben, and it’s not until that moment that he realizes how many sets of shoulders are blocking him in. His voice is kind when he asks, “What’s your name, boy?”

“George,” Ben blurts, automatically. He’s not even sure if he’s supposed to be talking. Silence would probably look worse, right?

“And how old are you?”

Ben sucks in his lip. “Nineteen.”

“You’re an awfully skinny nineteen.”

He lifts a shoulder. “I’m not psyched about it, either, sir.”

Abbott just looks for another long moment, and Ben has to force himself not to fidget, not to run. This isn’t like the run-ins he’d had on the way out there. There’s only an ocean behind him. Eventually, Abbott says, “Listen, you look fresh, so let me be the first to tell you that this is not a good group you’ve embedded yourself in here. If you ever realize that yourself…” he trails off as he shoves a hand into his pockets.

“We know how to contact you,” Will says.

“You really expect me to believe you’ll give it to him?” Abbott snaps, and it’s silent for a moment before Will responds.

“Fine, waste the paper. Come on, Georgie.”

Ben squeezes himself forward. He’s expecting some sort of business card, but instead it’s a corner of notebook paper, _Det. Thomas Abbott,_ then a phone number.

The walk the rest of the way to the truck and onto the road out of town is quiet, but eventually Rosie lets out a loud snort and yells, “What a fucking _hack.”_

It’s met with laughs and agreement, and eventually Will turns back through the truck’s rear window to say, “Don’t worry about any of that shit, Ben. The piggies are useless in this city. We’ve got you.”

James, when Ben finally sees him, is less easy-going about the encounter. It’s almost a relief to see that familiar, irritated, bitchy side of his brother again, proof that he hasn’t been completely hollowed out and replaced. Even having only been at the camp for the day, Ben can see that counterculture enclaves aren’t without their hierarchies—their illusions of immaculate leaders. 

His brother’s fuming by the time the whole story comes out. “He’s sixteen, and barely at that—”

“My birthday was in February,” Ben argues. but he’s still embarrassed to have caused any trouble at all. Everyone else seems stunned silent.

“—a missing child by any measurement, and with our parents… It was a fucking risk you took, bringing him here, then taking him out just to dick around town. I mean, for fuck’s sake, Will.”

Will doesn’t speak, but even Ben feels the tension radiating off him. “I _thought_ you’d be happy to see him again, Brother Indazita.”

“I am,” James snaps, and then his voice and his face softens as he looks at Ben again. “Really, I am. Hell, I wanted it so bad I couldn’t even dream of it. But you know what we have going on here, and what’s going on out there.” He exhales, and his body loses its tension. “It’s fine. We just… have to be careful.”

  
  


_Being careful,_ it turns out, means Ben not leaving the compound. What had seemed like a sprawling colony when they’d first driven up to it vacuums tight in the following days, a week, two. He spends his time in the gardens, walking the perimeter, by the lake, watching amateur carpenters replace dining chairs that were broken the night before.

Grass is about the only thing that makes the time go by.

Ben mostly sees James during dinner, from the opposite side of the table, talking to the off-commune men who come every few days, disappearing back into the sturdiest cabin on the grounds, the one Ben pinpointed as the source of the chemical odor that clings to everything.

He tries to be generous. James is _someone_ here.

But he was Ben’s brother first. Apparently that doesn’t count for anything anymore.

That’s the circle his mind is running in, but he still feels a bubble of happy anticipation rise up as James walks up to him as the sun starts to set on another sunny, warm, beautiful day, just like every one before it. It’s squashed when James approaches him and says, in that authoritative voice that he’s always had, “Benjamin, if you want to stay here, it’s time to seriously consider what you can contribute to this community.”

“What the fuck?” Ben says, and his high must be crashing down because it doesn’t take any time at all for the irritation to rise up. “Doesn’t it kind of defeat the purpose of ‘dropping out’ to force labor on a guy?”

“I’m not forcing anything on you, but if you are depending on the labor of the workers around you, it’s only fair that—”

“Oh, so you are still a Communist, that’s really radical. Why tear the system down when you can just replace it with your own, right?” 

James straightens his back, and Ben takes pride in how easy it is to rip off his mask. “It’s only natural that an ideology based on communal living influences—”

“Whatever, man,” Ben says as he stands. Fuck it. San Francisco has to be better than this. “I didn’t ask to get dragged here, and I _definitely_ didn’t ask to stay here. I don’t even know how you have all these people hanging on your every move, you’re just a fraud—”

It comes so suddenly that it knocks Ben off-balance, making him stumble before his hand automatically raises to his face. The stinging comes before the heat, prickling across his entire face, enough to make his eyes water. “What the _fuck,_ did you just _slap_ me?”

“What the fuck!” More than the pain in his face is the tightening in his chest, constricting even as it beats faster, practically out of his chest. He raises a hand, like he can hold it in pace. “What the fuck, you’re just like Dad. You’re _just_ like Dad, I can’t believe—”

He feels hands, gentle now, reaching out, but Ben jerks back. “Don’t touch me! I can’t believe you, I can’t…”

Ben can’t breathe. It’s ridiculous. This isn’t the first time he’s been hit, far from the hardest, but it’s different that it’s James, who isn’t even James anymore, that he’s 2,000 miles away from home. He’d thought leaving would finally burst the bubble around him, open up the world to him, but everything is still exactly the same.

He’s walking away before he can even think about it, feet clumsy beneath him, unable to see past the blur of the grass and throat choking on involuntary sobs. There’s only one dirt road out of here—he won’t get lost.

“Ben? Ben!”

It’s not James calling out, but Rosie. Ben doesn’t look up as thin arms wrap around his shoulders and she continues, concern deep and obvious, “What’s wrong? Baby, don’t be sad. You know we love you so much, we all do, Brother Indazita most all. What are you doing? Please don’t go, please, we love you.”

Ben shrugs her off, but she doesn’t leave his side. In fact, it’s not long before there are more hands on him, more voices surrounding him, only some of them familiar, not holding him back but still drowning out the raw panic ripping through his head. He needs to leave—but to where, exactly? He goes cold at the thought of having to go back on the road, alone.

It’s overwhelming. He misses a step but doesn’t fall—hands hold him up, and when he doesn’t try to make another step, bodies close around him, telling him he’s loved, he’s safe, he’s wanted.

A couple of hours later, and it’s like Ben has been emptied out. He can’t even draw any annoyance that _James_ gets to have his own bedroom. They’re shut in it now, just the two of them for the first time since the pond, that first say. 

Looking at James now, Ben can’t even tell what the act is—how he was when they were growing up, Brother Indazita, the man standing before Ben now with sincere eyes saying, “I can’t even tell you how sorry I am.”

Ben exhales. “He’s always sorry, too. After.” 

“Well, I really am,” James sighs as he slides into the chair opposite Ben. “It just hurts me to see you hurting. That’s all. I know this has been hard for you, and I just thought that being more involved with everyone would help you settle in better, especially since I can’t be with you as much as you want.”

“As much as I want,” Ben echoes, then laughs. What does Ben want? He wants his brother back.

When Ben doesn’t add anything else, James finally says, “I want to show you something. Something vital to understand our lives here. But you can’t bring all this bad energy you’re carrying into it. You have to trust me, and the people around us.”

“I do trust you,” Ben says, because despite it all, it must be true. Ben can’t imagine himself anywhere else. What else is waiting for him at the end of that dirt road?

Besides, he’s been dying to try acid. 

Ben isn’t sure how much of a secret it’s supposed to be on the commune, but he’s hardly the only person who seems to be high most of the time. But it’d never been offered, unlike everything else they have available, so Ben never asked.

The tab tastes more like paper and the ink used to print the strawberry onto it than anything else. Nothing of the chemicals it takes to make it.

James tells him to spit the blotter out after fifteen minutes but Ben just swallows it. Then he tells him to give it an hour.

“Okay,” Ben says, “do you mind if I lie down?”

Along with a real room, James has a real mattress to go with a real pillow and real blankets. They’re all rough enough that they were probably made by someone in the community, but it’s still more comfortable than anything Ben has felt since that last night at him, wide-eyed in his childhood bed waiting for the clock to tick to three.

Idly, he traces the grain of the sheets with his fingers, then more intently.

“Ben,” James chides, “I told you that you’d need to relax, man.”

He just shakes his head. He can feel himself being watched, not only by everyone around them but every _thing,_ too, and he’s been stuck here in this moment for so long. It feels like their gaze is the only thing keeping him in place.

A hand slips into his own and squeezes. Ben looks at James, then down at their linked hands, and exhales.

It’s amazing how being out of oneself makes them even more aware of oneself. Pain, the feeling of fingers stretching him open, and sweetness, soft kisses against his lips and his neck, they’re all just feelings in his body. That’s all they are.

“It’s everything,” Ben tries to explain. James just groans in response, the vibrations around his cock travels through his entire body and makes him shiver. He doesn’t know what to do with himself—this is nothing like jerking himself off, alone in every way imaginable, or the forced distraction waiting for a fiver.

Ben doesn’t think he’ll ever be alone again. He can feel the truth of it in the vibrations around them, the consuming way James grips him back. They’re brothers, and that feels like a holy thing. The entire world is made of the same stuff, but they’re flesh and blood, the same fated stardust pooling together.

Eventually James pulls back but he doesn’t go far. He kneels between Ben’s sprawled legs then presses closer, and Ben can feel so closely the head of James’ cock pressing against his hole and then inside of him. His entire body tingles, toes curling and straining. This is probably the only reason to have a body, he thinks, as dubious of a concept as that is.

It’s hard to focus on James. The world is glowing around him, vibrating with song that Ben strains to listen to. Perhaps it’s the same song that jolts through him when James pinches at his nipples.

“Oh,” Ben gasps, and he feels himself coming, his hand finding itself on his cock, jerking furiously as it overtakes him.

Ben is watching the fire and everyone around the fire and how stark they all are against the dark of the sky—all fire, the same fire, against the pit of nothingness, which they also are. Ben inhales

He has to beg James to let him leave the camp and go back to the beach, but they go, the both of them. The ocean is flat and cold. James says he can’t swim like this but it’s enough to just sit on the sandbar. The stars are beautiful and bright. The sand is soft. He can still hear that vital vibration in every crash of the waves.

  
  
  


Something breaks within the next few days, out of Ben’s view. It’s quiet, though, and it’s almost like he won the argument after all—nobody stops him from roling himself a pathetically skinny joint and lying out by the pond.

Ben hasn’t looked in a mirror since Chicago, but his face still feels hot and sore like a bruise when he prods at it. James doesn’t even wear rings.

He can’t stop thinking about it. That night. Acid changes you. It’s what everyone says. Ben thinks it’s true. Knows it’s true for him.

Hands shake Ben awake; he’s still half-dreaming as a voice tells him, “You need to get up.”

“Wuh?”

“Now, Benji. Get your things together,” James says, and then he’s heading back out the door. Ben blinks blearily a few times, wonders if he’s still dreaming after all, but in the end he rolls off the cot and grabs his backpack—it still fits all he owns with space left over.

Once he’s in the courtyard, Ben is more surprised that he managed to sleep this long at all. Every vehicle he’s seen is pulled up to the middle of everything, backs open as barrels and boxes are loaded in a rush.

He hesitates at the doorway for a moment, until someone walks up to him. Ron.

“You’re with me,” he says.

“What’s _happening?”_

Ron’s face is dark as he says, “Walls closing in. It was always a risk, but—”

“Ron!” James calls out, reappearing. “Have you checked—”

“Yes. Everything is straight.”

“Can you check _again?”_ James says, and Ron only stands there for another moment before walking away again without a word. To Ben, he says, “Did he tell you anything?”

“Uh, not really.” He repeats, “What’s happening?”

“Shit is happening, Ben.” James swears again. “Listen, Ron’s a good guy. You’re going to go with him, somewhere safe, lay low until the fire cools off again.”

 _“What?_ And what are you doing?”

“I have to tie up some loose ends. I… I won’t be far behind you, okay? But people here rely on me, and I’ve got shit I need to take care of,” James says, dedication radiating in his eyes. Then they flicker, looking at Ben again, brother to brother. Hesitantly, then firmly, James reaches out, wraps a hand around the back of Ben’s head, then brings it forward as he presses a dry kiss to his forehead. “I love you, Ben, more than anything.”

“I love you, too,” Ben says, knowing they both meant it.

Ron, Ben comes to realize, is a pilot. They’re flying somewhere safe.

Ron, his copilot, Ben, and more drugs than he can wrap his head around. 

They leave from Orange County Airport. It’s almost a comfort, except suddenly Ben wonders what kind of security is going on in airports to begin with, since he feels like everything about this whole operation screams guilt.

“You know, I’ve never actually flown before,” Ben admits as the engines roar into action.

“Well, we’re excited to pop this cherry for you, kid,” the copilot yells back, and then Ben can’t talk anymore, gaze fixated on the plane’s floor as they leave the ground.

Six hours later, and they’re in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, in Maui. Ben exits the plane as quickly as possible, and he’s dropped into the sort of beauty that makes him want to cry. What’s the point of existing anywhere but places like this?

He hears the now-familiar roar of the ocean and wanders in that direction—not like he’s any use with whatever else is going on with his private ride to paradise.

Ron finds him sometime later, sunburned with sand clinging to him. Ben asks, “Are we staying here?”

Ron shakes his head. “Just a pit stop. We’re still in the U.S, it’d be just as easy to pick us up here as it was back in California.”

“Oh,” Ben says. A feeling he doesn’t want to put a name to rises in his chest. His passport, his birth certificate, is all back in Michigan. He’s being smuggled, along with more hash and LSD than he can wrap his head around. His brother is at the head of all this.

They stand there, watching the waves. It’s beautiful. Ben’s eyes water.

Ron speaks again. “What we need to do, it’s going to take a few hours at least. I’d say we’re in the air again by five. We won’t wait once we’re done. Kahului is nine miles north. You know how to get around.”

Something drops into the sand next to him—a watch. Ben hears Ron walk away but doesn’t turn to watch. Doesn’t take his eyes off the horizon.

🍊


End file.
